Safe
by MoreThanWants
Summary: Post Skypeia arc. Robin suffers from an intense, painful nightmare and nothing will calm her except Zoro's reassuring words and presence. Rated T for allusions to violence and torture.


She's being electrocuted. Her nerve endings are on fire, muscles, tensed to their breaking point; it feels as if she's coming apart at the seams. Her throat feels jagged as broken glass and her screams grow hoarse after the first full minute. She can feel hands on her, but the pain is too great to do anything but scream. "Stop, stop _please!_ "

"Robin, calm down! It's just a dream, Robin, wake up!" The voices sound far away, and she knows them, she recognizes them, but she can't put faces to the people calling to her. A hand comes down on her shoulder and she kicks instinctively, a rough cry that masks a muffled gasp reaching her ears. She sounds like a wounded animal, and she's being backed into a corner.

"Please don't…agh!" Arms come around her and she's held to a warm solid chest. She struggles, all points of contact between her body and the other a blaze of agony. She struggles, feebly, but the arms only hold her tighter.

"It's alright, Robin," a soft, calm voice says in her ear, and the pain lessens, if only a little. He smells faintly of sweat, and steel and grass, and her head fits perfectly between his shoulder and jaw; she can feel the vibrations of his voice against her back when he speaks, "I've got you, it's alright."

And she knows him, knows this voice and this body holding hers. "Z-Zoro…."

"I'm here."

"I don't want to die, Zoro." Her throat hurts with every word, like salt after gravel after glass, and it's only then that she feels the tears coursing down her face, over her cheeks, into her mouth and down her chin. But he is her lifeline in the darkness, her anchor to reality, and she can't help but call out for him.

"You're not going to die." There's a shuffling and murmuring voices; the others are leaving, probably crowding out of the room at Chopper's orders. She's coming back now, can put names to faces and voices, but keeps her head tucked tight against the swordsman's chest and briefly wonders who it was she kicked, wishing she could apologize. Later, she promises herself.

"I've got you, Blue Eyes." He never calls her that unless they're completely alone, and then only very rarely; most of the time it's "Robin" or at the very least "woman". He reserves this particular name for her ears only and the cover of darkness.

"Zoro." If this were under any other circumstance, she would be ashamed of the whine in her voice, but the pain and the terror is still there under her skin, in her mind, so she lets herself curl into him like a child and bury her nose in his neck. He tightens his hold on her shoulders and begins to rock gently back and forth.

"I'm right here, I've got you."

"It hurts so much, Zoro." Fresh tears wet her eyes, then her cheeks, and she can feel it soaking into the fabric of his tee shirt, creating an uncomfortable scratchy friction against her nose. She sniffles and a sob breaks loose from her throat.

His arms tighten around her again, tucking her deeper into his embrace. "I know." Guilt pours off him in waves, and he sounds so ashamed of himself that she raises her head to get her first look at him since regaining a semblance of consciousness. His eyes are narrowed, as per usual, but they seem more liquid than she is accustomed to, and she realizes with a start that he's close to tears himself. "I'm sorry."

"Why are you sorry?" His reaction has jarred her from her state, and she straightens a bit (as much as he will let her with his arms tight around her. She finds she doesn't mind so much.) and wipes her eyes delicately. "There was nothing you could have done, Zoro. You did only what you could, and it was enough."

"Not nearly." It is a growl low from his throat, and she is reminded of the great anger that resides in him. She knows it is not directed at her (anymore), but at the person, the "god" that subjected her to this torture of the mind and senses. His hands twitch at her shoulders before smoothing the cotton of her pajama shirt, and he continues, "I could have taken it for you, I _would_ have, if only I had seen it coming. I could have gone straight for him from the beginning—none of this would have happened if I hadn't hesitated! I—"

She takes his face between her hands and forces him to look at her. "It tore me apart, Zoro. It ripped my mind and body apart and put me back together again. It would have done that to you. And then where would we have been? There was nothing more you could have done. Please, don't berate yourself over this, I don't think I could stand it." Her last words are a whisper, and how their foreheads came to be pressed together she doesn't know, but he doesn't recede, so neither will she.

"I thought you were dead," he murmurs, and if it were any other person she would call it a whisper, but Roronoa Zoro does not whimper. "When I caught you and put you down, you were so still I thought you dead."

"I was," she admits, and feels the tears come back. She presses closer to him and it's only now she realizes she's in his lap in her berth. But he hasn't moved, hasn't put an "appropriate" distance between them, so neither will she. "I was dead, for a minute. I think I came back when you caught me."

His breath stills in his chest, she can feel it, and when he looks up at her, his tears finally spill over, and it is the saddest thing she has ever seen, her swordsman crying. He doesn't say a word, just pulls her tight against him, and she goes, wraps her arms around him in their first true hug.

 _This,_ she thinks. _This is the safest I have ever been in my life._

A/N: Hi again! Wow, this was not as long as I thought it was going to be. I originally wrote it in the notes on my phone, having lost my flash drive that held all my writing on it, but I've found it now so I can get back to writing and posting whatever little thing pops into my head. First of all, I know Zoro might seem a little OOC what with the crying and the nickname and not whimpering, but I feel like he might be harboring just the tiniest bit of guilt over what happened to Robin when he was there to (in his mind) prevent it. Maybe I'm drawing mental lines between that and what happened to Kuina? That, by the way, is somewhat an inspiration to the line "and it is the saddest thing she has ever seen, her swordsman crying" because who didn't just bawl their eyes out during Zoro's childhood flashback, my word. Okay, this note is getting a little too long, and I don't really like rambling Author's Notes, so I'll end it here. Thanks for reading, as always, and if you have anything you think I should know, let me! See you again soon!


End file.
